Drink-O-Mender

Abstract

Social robots become increasingly important in the domain of healthcare and maintenance. Nutrition is not an exception: research robots are used in several experiments to teach people about healthy nutrition. Moreover, robotic products, whose task is to keep track of the user's nutrition, to provide tips, reminders, and to recognize anomalies in health-related behaviors are on the way to market. To convince users of a robot's recommendations, speech is an important interaction modality. However, automatically adapting a robot's spoken advise depending on users' behaviors is still a challenge. We address this issue by building Drink-O-Mender, an interactive installation, which includes a Reeti robot augmented with additional sensing and adaptation abilities. The robot is designed to offer drinks in a social setting. It aims to convince users of consuming healthy drinks while adapting its spoken advices depending on the users' selected beverage choices. The installation is equipped with custom hardware including a smartscale to sense the type and quantity of consumed drinks. We describe the interactive installation in detail and demonstrate feasibility of generating adaptive spoken advices by reporting on insights gained from exhibiting the installation during a public event and observing interactions of 78 users with the robot.

Let Me Show You Your New Home: Studying the Effect of Proxemic-awareness of Robots on Users’ First Impressions

“…As aforementioned in the analysis of the interview data, some participants stated that they could imagine that the proxemic robot's behavior may become too intrusive or annoying over time. We believe that such individual differences and an adaptation over time can only be addressed by advanced programming approaches, such as reinforcement learning approaches (e.g., [40], [41], [42]).…”

Affective Robotics For Wellbeing: A Scoping Review

“…Among the survey papers, 16 out of 26 (65%) used a bioinspired robot (note that one study [16] adopted two robotics platforms). Particularly, 14 studies (54%) adopted humanoid Self-disclosure (MW) Darwin mini Humanoid Semantic Understanding Autonomous [17] Physical Stimulation (PW) Nao and Poppy Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Semi-autonomous [18] Assessment Via 3D printed robot Humanoid Emotion Recognition Autonomous Clinical Interviews (MW) [19] Emotional Support (MW) Nao Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Non-autonomous [20] Physical Stimulation (PW) Cozmo Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Autonomous [21] Emotional Support (MW) Jibo Humanoid Movement Autonomous [22] Emotional Support (MW) Nao Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Semi-autonomous [16] Emotional Support (MW) Emarv4 and Blossom Non-humanoid and Animal-like Facial Expressions and Movement Non-autonomous [23] Fall Detection (PW) Side-bot Humanoid Facial Expressions Autonomous [24] Physical Stimulation (PW) Reeti Non-humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Non-autonomous [25] Food Promotion (PW) Cozmo Non-humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Semi-autonomous [26] Physical Stimulation (PW) Pepper Humanoid Emotion Recognition Autonomous [1] Emotional Support (MW) Pepper Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Semi-autonomous [27] Emotional Support (MW) IRS Animal-like Facial Expressions and Movement Semi-autonomous [28] Emotional Support (MW) PR2 Not-humanoid Movement Semi-autonomous [29] Food Promotion (PW) Reeti Non-humanoid Facial Expressions Autonomous [30] Emotional Support (MW) Alice Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Semi-autonomous [31] Emotional Support (MW) Huggable Animal-like Facial Expressions and Movement Non-autonomous [32] Entertainment (MW) Nao Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Semi-autonomous [33] Physical Stimulation (PW) Nao Humanoid Facial Expressions and Movement Non-autonomous Fig. 4.…”

Towards Somaesthetic Smarthome Designs

“…Recent developments in computing and design propagate designs for well-being (e.g., [7,15,37]), mindfulness (e.g., [3,47]), (soma)esthetic appreciation [21], mental and physical health (e.g., [9,13,35]). To this end, researcher build on foundations and advances in affective computing and user experience research and take inspirations from emerging (interdisciplinary) fields, such as positive computing [10], somaesthetics [38], and mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) [23].…”